Posted Toronto Political Panel: Office expenses and mock outrage

City councillors’ office expenses for the fourth quarter of 2010 were posted online last week. Chris Selley, Matt Gurney, and Jonathan Goldsbie debate the point at which an abundance of caution turns into excessive second-guessing.

SELLEY: It says something that last week, of all weeks, was one of the slowest in recent memory for news coming out of City Hall — because councillors’ expenses were released, and that’s usually at least good for some mock outrage. Believe me, I struggled valiantly to get upset with what we learned. Michael Thompson paying $300 to have his office blessed by a Baptist minister annoyed the atheist in me … but then, as no actual service was provided, it basically amounted to a donation — and councillors make all sorts of those. (Maybe they shouldn’t.) And then Thompson refunded it anyway! The closest I got to really caring was about certain councillors, notably Giorgio Mammoliti, racking up thousands of dollars in data roaming charges. They ought to have known better, but then I just end up being really angry at how much roaming charges are. What about you, fellas? Was there anything there worth cracking down upon?

GURNEY: I think the Bussin Blue Jays left me permanently unable to generate all that much outrage. It’s hard to top that. The Baptist blessing did come close, though, because as Chris says, it’s not appropriate (and I’m by no means an atheist, so between us, I’m sure we can assume most would agree). But, again as Chris says, Thompson immediately refunds the money, so how can you get too offended by it? Caroll’s office renos were handled properly, in that she waited to make sure she was re-elected. All told there’s not a lot to get that freaked out a bit here (who doesn’t like popcorn?). I think the thing that stands out the most is that, total, we’re talking $1.6-million here. That’s a chunk of change, for sure, but come on. Taking care of these pennies isn’t going to do much to help the dollars.

GOLDSBIE: On Facebook, Councillor James Pasternak expressed surprise and dismay that “almost every basic office support is debited from the office account. So it looks like we are spending a lot more than we actually are.” Well, that’s easy to say for someone who spent $2.73 on each of a red felt stamp pad and a blue felt stamp pad. City Hall should be run like a business, dammit, and businesses are monochromatic. Pasternak says he also decided against getting “an extra, used and old desktop computer” for his office, after City IT staff told him that $900 would be debited from his account for it. What if that expense ended up on the cover of the Sun? Or the Star? All City Hall computing functions should be restricted to the built-in calculators on personal cell phones, lest your or my disdain be inadvertently invoked; this, presumably, is how they do things at Deco Labels.

SELLEY: Man, we should have let Goldsbie go first, because now I am sort of annoyed. People are entitled to get annoyed by whatever the hell they want, but councillors shouldn’t worry that reasonable expenditures will get them in trouble with the big, bad media. (Last week bears that out.) Heck, councillors were buying iPads and nobody seems to care. (iPads are more potentially outrageous than computers because they’re newer technology. That’s how these things work.) As long as councillors are prepared to justify their spending — note: “it’s an insignificant amount of money” isn’t a justification — they’ll be fine. To pick the sort of example often cited by anti-gravy advocates, if a councillor can’t explain why a trip to a conference overseas benefited the city or his constituents, then he shouldn’t have gone.

GURNEY: I think it’s a damn good thing that the councillors are very cautious with money that doesn’t belong to them. The media won’t jump on stories without much there, and a new computer for an office is entirely reasonable (and the absolute fail safe is even if the media does jump on something stupid, the people will roll their eyes and ignore us until we go away). Expensing a thousand bucks for a new computer is easier for the public to swallow than a few bucks for chicken nuggets or a bunny suit. Voters are mostly reasonable. So long as the things that are getting expensed don’t come across as frivolous or reeking of entitlement, councillors need not fear.

GOLDSBIE: Yes, it’s the responsibility of every councillor to remain conscious of what every editor at every newspaper might consider outrageous. And to not expense things which can easily be represented by stock photos. Optics are not an absolute; they are a construction (sometimes accidental, sometimes deliberate) of media and political rhetoric. Few things are prima facie great or awful, reasonable or unreasonable; how something comes across is largely about framing, presentation, and other particular choices. An actual lede from a Toronto Sun story last week: “Former city council speaker Sandra Bussin charged taxpayers 58 cents for postage during her last month in office.” I want desperately to believe the reporter was engaging in knowing self-parody.

• Matt Gurney is a member of the Post’s editorial board and deputy editor of FullComment.com, the Post’s opinion blog. Follow him at twitter.com/mattgurney